No Limits, Just Edges: Jackson Pollock

by David Anfam, Susan Davidson, Margaret Ellis

While legendary artist Jackson Pollock has been comprehensively investigated in recent shows, a focused exhibition examining his drawings has not been organzied since 1980. No Limits, Just Jackson Pollock Paintings on Paper features a compelling group of 75 artworks drawn from the holdings of institutions and private collections worldwide. This long-awaited exhibition to be held at the Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin, Guggenheim Bilbao, and the Peggy Guggnheim Collection, Venice and curated by Susan Davidson considers the artist's works on paper as an essential component in his signature transformation of the traditional figurative line into a non-figurative graphic expression. This catalogue of the exhibiton begins chronologically with Pollock's early sketchbook studies based on old master paintings by Michelangelo and El Greco, as well as those influenced by his contemporaries, mainly the Mexican muralists Jose Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros. These early works reveal a figurative quality that Pollock ultimately rejected as he moved at first toward pieces that mirrored his advancements in painting, and eventually, by late 1947, to abstract compositions. Throughout his career, Pollock experimented with different media on paper, alternating the same themes on watercolor and lithography, and later adding gouache to engravings to provide interesting variations. In the last years of his life, Pollock's fascination with different types of paper led him to special hand-made sheets that allowed the paint to permeate below the main layer thus achieving fortuitous variations of his well-known poured painting technique. This fully illustrated catalogue, which shows the full range of Pollock's works on paper, includes a reassessment of his skills as a draftsman, authored by Dr. David Anfam, a noted scholar of Abstract Expressionism. Susan Davidson contributes a text that focuses on Pollock's stylistic development and the reception of his works on paper during his lifetime. A technical analysis of Pollock's working method is provided by Margaret Hoben Ellis.

Genres: Art

Paperback

First published April 15, 2005

Reviews

[Servabo · Rating 3 out of 5]

No limits, just edges - this is a concise description of Jackson Pollock's work. In his famous action paintings, the artist fully ignores what is conventionally regarded to be the real pictorial space; color and movement virtually break through the prescribed surface of the canvas. Just as fascinating as the large format paintings, with which Pollock was a founding member of Abstract Expressionism, are his drawings - his artworks on paper.

[Jane · Rating 2 out of 5]

I took this book out of the library to get a good splattering of inspiration. I didn't really read this book, but I did look at the pictures. I wanted to see some Pollocks before going to Venice to see the Peggy Guggenheim museum. In other books I have read that Peggy is generally given credit for discovering Pollock's artistic abilities and for promoting him. In regard to the paintings, this is one of those instances where I am not a big fan of the art, but I love the stories behind it. This is where art history overpowers the canvas, where the written word is more insteresting than the splashes of colour.